


Josh Doesn't Understand the Intricacies of Texas Hold 'Em!

by stillscape



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Gen, Las Vegas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 09:14:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8885254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/pseuds/stillscape
Summary: In the end, it’s not guilt over leaving his father alone for the holidays that puts Greg Serrano on a plane headed back to West Covina, California (or, technically, Ontario, California). It’s not guilt, or a sense of nagging obligation to his mother, or loneliness, or unresolved feelings. It’s definitely not loneliness or unresolved feelings.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flybbfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flybbfly/gifts).



> Dear flybbfly, happy Yuletide! I hope you like this.
> 
> Thanks to my muses/sounding boards/beta readers, Captain Amberica and Emily of Emily.

In the end, it’s not guilt over leaving his father alone for the holidays that puts Greg Serrano on a plane headed back to West Covina, California (or, technically, Ontario, California). It’s not guilt, or a sense of nagging obligation to his mother, or loneliness, or unresolved feelings. 

It’s _definitely_ not loneliness or unresolved feelings.

It is, he tells himself, a combination of the following: first, a realization that once he starts at Emory in the spring semester, he won’t have nearly as much free time on his hands; second, the prospect of feeling superior for _coming back_ to West Covina, thus underlining the fact that he has left it; third, this excellent last-minute deal on a plane ticket. Sure, he’ll be leaving late on Christmas Eve and he’ll only have 30 minutes to make his connection in Las Vegas, but it’s worth it. 

He clicks “purchase” with some satisfaction, has the Southwest website forward the travel itinerary to his dad, then leans back in his ergonomic swivel desk chair, elbows wide, resting his head in his clasped fingers. 

“I could stay in Atlanta and have a perfectly good Christmas by myself, if I wanted to.” The sentence falls on the deaf, fuzzy ears of a Chik-Fil-A “Eat Mor Chickn” plush cow wearing an incongruous Santa hat, the only even remotely anthropomorphic object in his one-bedroom apartment. “But I don’t.” 

The cow remains impassive. A tiny ping reverberates in the pit of Greg’s stomach. 

Nope. Definitely not loneliness. 

 

Christmas Eve comes. The old Greg would have thrown a pile of rumpled, half-clean jeans and t-shirts and hoodies into his carry-on. The new one takes the time not only to ensure he only packs entirely clean clothes, but also that he packs the nicest of his jeans and t-shirts and hoodies. All his clothes have become a little baggy of late—who knew alcohol had so many calories, or that working at a bar led to the consumption of so much bar food?—but nevertheless, he wants to impress upon everyone just how well he’s doing, doubly important since he hasn’t told anyone he’s coming. 

He even pulls the better of his two suits out of its dry-cleaning bag and holds it up with a critical eye.

“Yes, cow, I _have_ become the kind of person who dry-cleans his suits.” 

The cow remains indifferent; Greg folds his suit into the built-in garment bag anyway, along with the better of his belts. 

 

“Ladies and gentlemen waiting to board Southwest flight 354 to Las Vegas, we are experiencing a delay due to weather conditions elsewhere in the country. Our plane will be approximately twenty minutes late arriving from Chicago. Once it arrives, we’ll do our absolute best to have it turned around quickly so that you can reach your destinations…” 

In the end, they’re only fifteen minutes late boarding. Greg even manages to get a window seat, on the other side of a nice African American couple his parents’ age. They offer him homemade gingerbread men and tell him all about the daughter they’re going to visit, who’s just completed her first semester in a tenure-track position at UNLV. 

The pleasant conversation almost makes up for the fact that they’re now at the end of a long line of planes waiting to take off. And it keeps him from thinking too hard about the fact that he deliberately hasn’t told anyone except his father that he’s going to be in town. 

As soon as the flight attendant says it’s okay to use small electronic devices, Greg puts on his headphones, closes his eyes, and leans back as far as the seat will allow. Elton John’s “Rocket Man” comes up on shuffle. 

Screw you, symbolism. 

But it’s a good song, so he doesn’t change it. 

 

He rushes to check the departures board, evading several small children and a bank of slot machines to get there. 

“Dammit!” he mutters. Then he takes a deep breath and goes to talk to a gate agent. The gate agent smiles, but draws her breath sharply through her teeth before telling Greg what he already knows, that the flight he’s just missed was the very last one going to any of the airports in the Greater Los Angeles area. 

And, through a stroke of truly inane luck, there are literally no rental cars to be had in the city. Hotel rooms, sure, but no rental cars. 

In the end, Greg Serrano just has to accept the fact that he’s going to be stuck in Las Vegas for Christmas Eve. Alone. 

In the end, he decides, this isn’t even such a bad thing. The last-minute rates at Caesar’s Palace aren’t completely terrible. He calls his dad and makes his apologies.

“What are you apologizing for? It’s not your fault the plane was late!” 

“I know, but…” 

He waits for the “go enjoy yourself” but instead the line goes quiet for a moment. 

“You gonna be okay?” _In Las Vegas, party capital of the world, on a holiday, this early in your recovery_ remains unsaid. 

“Yes, Dad. It’s fine. It’s less than 24 hours. I’ll just grab a burger, maybe play some blackjack, and I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

He checks into the room, splashes a little water on his face, stares at himself in the bathroom mirror for about ten seconds. 

There is alcohol _everywhere_ on the casino floor. It’s not like he wants any (he doesn’t), but...maybe avoiding the blackjack tables would be a good idea. He walks past waitresses in skimpy outfits paired with surprisingly sensible shoes carrying it on trays, bars popping up out of the patterned carpet, Midwesterners with both beer guts and beers, more than a few are-they-even-legal women in sequins and tiaras, faces surprisingly red and patchy. There are signs on the ceiling, theoretically pointing to the food court. Instead he somehow walks in at least six large circles before he hits the Forum. 

He’s about to ask himself, out loud (it’s not sad to talk to yourself out loud), where the Smashburger is. Instead what comes out is “Christmas Waxing Convention?” Which is what the giant banner stretched across the hallway reads. 

He shrugs and soldiers on through the crowds. Once, he thinks he hears someone hiss “ _Greg!_ ” But when he turns around, all that’s behind him is an amorphous mass of revelers and aestheticians. 

Or so he thinks for half a second, before a familiar voice 180 degrees in the other direction yells “Dude! What are you doing here?” and Greg finds himself on the receiving end of a familiar, cheerful, Signature Bro Hug. 

“Josh?” 

“Oh, my god, man! Greg! Dude! You didn’t tell me you were coming to Vegas!”

“Oh, well, I’m actually supposed to be—” Greg stops himself just before _in West Covina_ slips out, because surely even Josh Chan might come to the conclusion that there’s something weird and undeniably a little shitty in failing to tell any of your best friends that you’re coming home for a visit. He quickly clears his throat instead. “You didn’t tell _me_ you were going to…”

“Anna’s got a thing. Hey, Anna. Anna!” 

Greg has no idea who Anna is. 

One of the aestheticians detaches herself from the amorphous mass, tweezers in hand. Josh easily slides an arm around her waist. 

“Anna, Greg’s here!” 

“Greg? Like, Greg Greg?”

“Yeah! Greg like Greg Greg!” 

“Oh my god, Greg!” 

_Who the hell is Anna?_ he mouths at Josh, as he learns that Anna is one of those people who gives dead fish hugs instead of handshakes. He knows the type; they’re endemic to the greater Los Angeles area. Blonde and pretty and utterly without quirk or charm. He dislikes her immediately. 

Josh looks faintly hurt. “You haven’t been following my Instagram?”

“No.” 

“Oh. Well, I guess you’ve been really busy in your new life.” 

“Josh, I didn’t follow your Instagram when I lived in West Covina.” 

He watches as Josh Chan mentally replays various clips from the “Greg Hates Social Media” file. Josh’s expression screen-wipes from hurt to cheerful again. 

“That’s right!” 

“Okay, so…” 

“Wanna grab a drink? I don’t think Anna needs me right now—oh, right. Sorry.” 

Greg takes a deep breath. “Actually, I was just on my way to grab a burger or something.” 

Josh beams. 

By the time they’ve reached Smashburger, Greg has changed his mind. He does like Anna. Anna is great. Anna is an all-consuming topic that totally precludes Josh from asking any questions about Greg’s new life, and keeps Greg from making any inquiries about any of their mutual acquaintances. And bless Josh Chan, really, bless his little heart—aha, there it is, he’s picked up a Southern idiom—bless Josh Chan for being such a dumb, simple puppy, so easily enthralled with a new girlfriend that the circumstances under which Greg left all those months ago have clearly not fired a single synapse in his brain.

If Greg wasn’t so focused on not focusing on anything other than Anna, he might notice three red, sparkly shadows on the edge of his peripheral vision. But he is, and he doesn’t. Not consciously, anyway. Sure, as he and Josh walk back through the Forum, he feels a palpable sensation of something red and glowing trailing behind him. But that, he tells himself, is friendship. Friendship and holiday spirit. 

Not until he endures three and a half minutes of painful small talk with Anna (he doesn’t like her again), bids adieu to his oldest friend, and decides to visit the men’s room does he notice the red, glowing sensation in _front_ of him. It’s going into the women’s room, is what it’s doing. It’s scurrying, rushing into the women’s room as though it doesn’t want him to see it, and there are three parts of the sensation, each wearing a strapless red sequined cocktail dress and matching sparkly green-and-red striped elf hat: a tall, thin, dark-haired part, a normal-height, dark-haired part wearing thoroughly inappropriate combat boots, and (god _damn_ it) an adorably petite part with a sandy brown, wavy, chin-length bob. 

“Right,” he says out loud, to no one. “Okay. I’m just going to pretend I didn’t see that.” Resolution firmly passed, he goes in to do his business. 

“Definitely didn’t see it,” he tells his reflection, as he washes his hands, and then, “I’m really good at pretending.” Which, if he were to be honest with himself right now, has long been the problem, how good he is at pretending. 

Now is not the time for honesty. 

But then he walks out of the bathroom and runs smack into her, like full-on Wile E. Coyote hitting a wall smack into her, because of course he does. Behind her left shoulder, he sees Heather and Valencia staring in horror, jaws slack. Heather recovers first, right about the time Greg flicks his eyes over and nods in acknowledgement, and she quickly ushers Valencia to a not-very-well-concealed hiding spot behind a Wheel of Fortune slot machine. 

“Hi, Greg.” It’s quiet. A quiet squeak. 

He breathes in, then out. 

“Rebecca.” 

“I wasn’t trying—I mean, I was—I was trying to keep you from seeing me.” He waits two beats for Rebecca to realize all the ways he could possibly misinterpret this statement; she gets there in one and a half. “Not because I don’t want to see you. It’s so good to see you! I mean, I didn’t want _Josh_ to see me. I’m definitely not stalking Josh and his new girlfriend. We’re just having a gal-pal Christmas in Las Vegas—” 

“You and Valencia and Heather.” That has to be a lie. Rebecca is almost never above lying; he needs to remember as much. 

On the other hand, he did see the three of them, dressed alike, looking very much like gal pals. 

She nods, furiously. “That’s right. And, well, we saw you with Josh, but I swear—” here comes the note of pleading—“I swear. I swear I genuinely did not know you were in Las Vegas.” She’s clutching his arm by the end of the sentence; he wills himself not to look at her hand. “I really didn’t.” 

And, given the circumstances that have led him here, he believes her. 

“I know.” 

“Okay.” Rebecca nods, releases his arm, takes a step back. “Okay. Okay. Well, again, it was great to see you. I’m gonna get back to my girls. My squad. We’re a squad now, me and Valencia and—well, anyway. You know them. Merry Christmas. Good to see you. Again. Greg. You look…”

“What?” he sighs, after the pause becomes unbearable. 

“Really good, actually.” 

His instincts are so, so wrong with her; he _knows_ that. But there’s something different about them now, or something different about him, or maybe it’s her, or maybe it’s everything? 

What it’s not—this realization strikes him suddenly, again with the full knowledge that his Rebecca instincts are the worst—well, anyway—

It’s not desperate. 

He doesn’t feel confident enough to definitively declare that Rebecca is not, in some way, desperate. But in this moment, he, Gregory Serrano, is not. That, he knows. 

“Do you want to go for a walk?” 

Rebecca’s mouth turns up at the corners, just slightly. She nods. 

“But I want to be comfortable. Can I change my shoes?” She points down at her feet, wrapped in insanely complicated and high-heeled gold sandals. 

He’d prefer not to wait; if he has to wait, the BAD IDEA warning signs are going to start flashing. But Rebecca’s gone before he can answer, yelling “I’ll meet you right back here in five!” into the casino crowds. 

 

For once, Rebecca is true to her word, re-appearing at his side comically fast with a sweatshirt thrown over the sparkly cocktail dress and Ugg boots in place of the sandals. She’s left on the hat. She looks like Santa’s elf on a walk of shame. Paradoxically, this makes her all the more beautiful.

 

The night is cold, colder than you’d expect, even with the knowledge that Las Vegas is in the middle of the desert. A sharp breeze sweeps the Strip, piercing the spaces between giant hotels, raising goosebumps on the backs of both their necks. 

Rebecca doesn’t seem to feel the cold much. Maybe it’s the New Yorker in her. The Santa hat can’t possibly be keeping her ears warm. 

For the first thirty, silent seconds after they leave the warmth of the casino, he’s afraid they won’t have anything to talk about after all, that the wind has swept away their words. Then Rebecca’s inability to deal with silence kicks in. After eighteen minutes of a one-sided conversation about the Rebecca-Valencia-Heather friendship threesome, they find themselves at the Bellagio fountains. She finally fades out as they watch streams of water spin and spray to Frank Sinatra’s “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” 

“Look,” says Rebecca, turning to him. “When you left, at the airport, when you said—” 

Greg shakes his head, blinks away a tear. It’s the wind, not his feelings, but he closes his eyes again for half a second longer. 

Just before Greg opens his eyes, everything becomes clear. He feels oddly suave, like he’s suddenly in the Rat Pack (it is Vegas, after all, even if he never did put on the suit he brought). His internal monologue plays in sync with the Bellagio fountains, perfectly paced and measured. He opens his eyes to see the bright lights of Las Vegas sending perfect chiaroscuro shadows, directing his vision. And there she is, right in front of him: his scarlet woman, his femme fatale. 

But he’s not in a noir anymore. Rebecca, though still painful, no longer feels like an open wound. You need a certain degree of self-loathing to truly be in a noir, and he thinks, hopes, that most of his stayed in West Covina with all his metaphorical wound-causing mental knives. 

“Greg?”

“You left a bruise under my skin,” he tells her. “Like, _really_ deep inside. But you know what?” 

She shakes her head. 

“It’s healed,” he says, simply. As he says the words, he knows them to be true. When she’s here, like this, it hurts. There’s undeniably still a mark. But once he stops pushing on the spot, it won’t hurt anymore. The mark will continue to fade.

“So you’re okay? You’re really doing okay? Because it’s like you just disappeared—”

“Well, I _did_ —” 

“And no one heard anything from you. I mean. I understand completely why you wouldn’t want to talk to me, or to Josh, but I don’t think even White Josh has really known…” 

He notices, suddenly, that she’s shivering after all. 

“Greg? Are you happy?” 

He thinks back over the past few months; about packing up his life suddenly, moving across the country with barely a plan in mind. He’s been naive about some things (turns out you can’t just show up somewhere with a decade-plus old acceptance letter and expect to start classes the next Monday), pleasantly surprised about others (the relative sanity of Atlanta apartment rental prices). He’s been to what seems like a million AA meetings and way too many meaningless job interviews for meaningless jobs. He’s been to the meaningless job that nevertheless feels completely tolerable, because he’s confident he won’t be stuck working it forever. He can count four people, outside of his sponsor, whom he might reasonably describe as friends. He’s remained sober. He has not slept with anyone since Rebecca, nor has he met anyone with whom he might conceivably want to sleep. 

“Not yet,” he tells her. 

He imagines filling in all the details—later, and somewhere it’s warm—because of all the people he’s ever met, Rebecca Bunch is the only one who truly understands what it is to throw your life in a suitcase and unpack it somewhere else. She’ll scrunch up her nose in concern over some of the details of his new life; he’ll put his coffee on the table until it cools off enough to drink instead of gesturing defensively with it. He sees this, clearly, in his mind’s eye. He sees the ending, too: a hug that will go on just long enough for the scent of her shampoo to hit home. There will be no sex of questionable significance. 

“Not yet. But—” 

“What?” she pipes up, ever the interrupter. 

(It’s back to being cute, her constant interrupting, instead of being so infuriating he wants to shut her up by kissing her.)

“I think I’m going to be.”


End file.
